February 2011. They gathered in the streets. Mobs of people. And they were angry. Angry with the status quo. Angry at the will of the leadership. And there were police. In riot gear. No one knew exactly what role they would play.
Rocks flew. Windows broke. Glass was everywhere.
No, this wasn´t Egypt. It was Friedrichshain, Berlin, Wednesday, February 2, right in front of my apartment. And no, they weren´s angry with Angela Merkel. One of the last squats in Berlin had been cleared out days earlier by the police. It was the end of an era.
After the fall of the Wall, Berlin became a haven for artists and hippies, a symbol of the grunge alternative culture of the 90s. Neighborhoods like Kreuzberg in the West and Prenzlauerberg and Friedrichshain in the East were colonized by flocks of young people who didn´t want to pay rent or live by someone else´s rules. But even hippies grow up sometimes, and little by little the city and a newer gentrified generation moved in, and alternative Berlin became a thing of the past. That is, except for a few corners of Friedrichshain and other areas that held on for dear life.
Supposedly 2,500 police arrived at 14 Liebigstraße to clear the place of the 20 or so leftists living there. Later that night 1,500 people protested. I happened to walk right through the protests, by accident, as usual. A friend had offered to help me move a table into my apartment, and so we found ourselves carrying a coffee table through the streets of Friedrichshain just as the protesters were assembling themselves, not ideal, but it went ok, and now I sort of have furniture.
If the protests had been one day later, it would have been particularly awful, as Malka, the friend who had visited the week earlier, was on her way back to Berlin from a poorly timed trip to Egypt that ended in an emergency evacuation through Jordan and Frankfurt. I won´t go into much detail, as that is her story to tell. Basically I ended up with a few extra Malka days. As a refugee camp we were a lot less scheduled than during the first part of her Berlin visit. It´s even possible that I made up for my failed hostessing skills. She got to meet my friends, the other fellows and friends and co-workers from Germany, and got a much more authentic look at my life here in Berlin.
The definition of Anger in german is actually meadow...
Rocks flew. Windows broke. Glass was everywhere.
No, this wasn´t Egypt. It was Friedrichshain, Berlin, Wednesday, February 2, right in front of my apartment. And no, they weren´s angry with Angela Merkel. One of the last squats in Berlin had been cleared out days earlier by the police. It was the end of an era.
After the fall of the Wall, Berlin became a haven for artists and hippies, a symbol of the grunge alternative culture of the 90s. Neighborhoods like Kreuzberg in the West and Prenzlauerberg and Friedrichshain in the East were colonized by flocks of young people who didn´t want to pay rent or live by someone else´s rules. But even hippies grow up sometimes, and little by little the city and a newer gentrified generation moved in, and alternative Berlin became a thing of the past. That is, except for a few corners of Friedrichshain and other areas that held on for dear life.
Supposedly 2,500 police arrived at 14 Liebigstraße to clear the place of the 20 or so leftists living there. Later that night 1,500 people protested. I happened to walk right through the protests, by accident, as usual. A friend had offered to help me move a table into my apartment, and so we found ourselves carrying a coffee table through the streets of Friedrichshain just as the protesters were assembling themselves, not ideal, but it went ok, and now I sort of have furniture.
If the protests had been one day later, it would have been particularly awful, as Malka, the friend who had visited the week earlier, was on her way back to Berlin from a poorly timed trip to Egypt that ended in an emergency evacuation through Jordan and Frankfurt. I won´t go into much detail, as that is her story to tell. Basically I ended up with a few extra Malka days. As a refugee camp we were a lot less scheduled than during the first part of her Berlin visit. It´s even possible that I made up for my failed hostessing skills. She got to meet my friends, the other fellows and friends and co-workers from Germany, and got a much more authentic look at my life here in Berlin.
The definition of Anger in german is actually meadow...
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